What Do You Remember?
by FanOfHan
Summary: First in the 'Forgotten Time' trilogy. Leia finds out more of Han's past


_First in the _**Forgotten Time **_trilogy _

_------_

_The child thought that perhaps he remembered shoes. Good shoes, nice ones, shoes that someone had put on his feet and helped him fasten. Someone who was gentle, who smiled instead of scowled, someone who was clean and smelled good, who wore pretty clothes… The lady reminded him of someone, with her big, dark eyes, her smooth skin, her hair… _

_SLAM!_

_The small child shuddered again as his mind resolutely shut out all his memories of that beforetime. _A.C. Crispin's '_The Paradise Snare'_

_I have no memory of my mother. I never knew her. _Luke Skywalker

_Pain can make us many things. Alike where we knew not, brothers where we saw not. And we, we are not so different from each other, you and I. _

_----------------------_

The air was hot today, and humid, and the children were out with their uncle. He seemed to be the only one who could truly control them.

The windows of this room were flung open and a cool breeze drifted across heated skin, raising goosebumps and evoking shivers.

She lay on her side, the crisp white sheet pulled up to her underarms at her anterior and down to the small of her back at her posterior, where it then draped across his waist. He was on his side, too, behind her, his hands lazily wandering up and down her spine.

"Han?"

"Mmm?"

"What happened to you?"

For a moment, the hand ceased their caress.

"What?"

She shifted onto her back to look at him.

"Your parents. How did you end up on the street?"

Leia had learned long ago that the way to find out about her husband was usually to do it when they were thinking on the same level.

They often had very meaningful conversations after making love or sometimes if one or other of them had suffered, no matter how greatly.

Han, for example, had learned a great deal about Leia after bandaging her arm on Endor, and they had shared a long conversation following their escape from Tatooine after he had been freed from the Carbonite.

And it was with this in mind that she asked him now. And she knew he would be unlikely to ignore or fend off her question. He had become a great deal more open since their marriage, perhaps because someone to love and a family who cared was what he had truly been searching for all his life.

"What brought this up?"

She smiled and wriggled where she lay, then giggled at his response.

"I was thinking about what you do to me, and what I know you like," she said, "and then I was thinking about what I _don't_ know about you."

He raised his eyebrows and then rolled onto is back. She turned the other way, back onto her side, then onto her stomach and watched the rise and fall of his chest as he tugged the sheet off his stomach and down to his hips and drew a hand across his forehead.

"Oh."

She looked at him and ducked her head after a long silence.

"Well?"

He turned his head and gazed, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"Well, what?"

She swiped at his shoulder and then settled herself.

"What happened to you?"

His eyes found hers and, for a moment, he hesitated.

"I didn't used to remember. I didn't used to know. When I was very small, I couldn't remember anything. Just images, really, feelings. I used to think about them sometimes. To wonder how I came to be that way; on the street, cold, unable to talk properly. I never understood, really."

He reached out and brushed a strand of her behind her ear. Making sure she was still there beside him, there if he needed her.

"And as I grew older, I wondered why they didn't come to find me."

She trailed her hand over his chest and rested it over his heart.

"I knew," he continued, "some kids went around crying because their parents had died. I remember thinking I'd prefer it if my parents had died and not just left me. So I thought of them that way. As dead. That way they loved me but they'd been taken from me. It was easier that way.

But as I grew older, little things started to come back to me. Just little things."

Leia waited a moment before she prompted him.

"What like?"

His eyes seemed to be staring beyond the ceiling, almost as if he could see into the past.

"Like little things. I remember a voice, singing. My mother's, I think it must have been. I didn't even know what she was singing until recently.

But I remembered that, eventually, too. It turned out it was that lullaby I'm always singing to Anakin. I guess she must have taught me it. Although I don't really remember it that well."

"Anakin seems to like it," she answered.

Han laughed a moment, but then the smile faded and he stared at the ceiling again.

"Then I started to see more, sometimes in my sleep or sometimes when I was daydreaming.

My mother, she…She looked like you a little. She wasn't the tallest, but she had big eyes, and long dark hair and soft skin. And she smelled like starflower.

And I remember she used to laugh. Always happy. Had a laugh like ice water over pebbles – clear, alive. Voice like Enier honey."

He held his arms up straight, as though he were holding something up far above his face and smiled gently.

"She used to lift me up and hold me over her head. I loved that. She'd just hold me there and talk to me and I just laughed and laughed."

"Like you do with Anakin?"

Han nodded.

"Yeah. That's how I knew my name. She used to say it when she held me up. 'Hello, Han!' 'Who's a good boy, Han?' 'You like that don't you, Han? Yes you do!' And I did."

Again the happiness faded from his expression and he let his arms fall back to his sides.

"And there was a man there, too," he shrugged. "My dad, maybe. He had longer arms than my mother. He could lift me up higher. His hair was the same colour and he was really tall. He had brown eyes.

But my mother… she had green eyes. Green eyes. Green like the meadows outside Coronet. Or like the water in the sea turns when the sun hits it in just the right place. You know you can get emerald firestones? Just like that. Beautiful.

And they turned gold when she laughed."

Like mother, like son, Leia thought.

"And then I didn't remember anything for a big while."

Leia smiled. 'Big While' was a baby phrase Han used with Anakin.

'I won't be gone for a Big While. Just till tea time.'

"But a coupla years before I met you, I remembered I got thrown in a wardrobe and there was my dad shouting and bright lights and my mom screaming. And then silence for a day or two."

Leia narrowed her eyes and shook her head.

"I don't understand."

"I didn't either for a long time," he said. "I remember sittin' there in the wardrobe for a long while wonderin' where everyone was. And I got hungry."

"I'll bet," she whispered.

"And I kept pushing the door but it wouldn't open from the inside. I mean, eventually it did open, but…

I crawled out and looked around. I can't have been more than two. And I looked, and there was my mom. Fast asleep on the floor.

And – what do you do? – I crawled over to her. And I said, 'Mama.' She didn't move so I tried again. 'Mama, veish rheis,' Mama, wake up. But she didn't. She just lay there. And I kept trying.

And then this voice says, 'Han.' There was a man in the doorway. I nearly screamed he scared me so much. I don't remember what he looked like, only that he was dressed in black and was so tall the light hurt my eyes if I looked up at his face."

"What was he doing?" Leia asked in a whisper, afraid, like a child being told a bedtime story, that if she spoke too loud, the man from Han's memory would be alerted to her presence.

"He walked over to me and crouched down next to me. I saw he had something. I know now it was a blaster, but I didn't then. And he crouched down and stared at me for a minute. Then I tried again. 'Mama, veish rheis.' But she wouldn't get up.

The air smelt strange. Like metal, almost. And burning.

And then the man took hold of my shoulder and sat me down on the floor. I looked at him and then tried again. 'Mama-' but he put out his arm to block me and said, 'nierts.'

No.

I stopped for a second and then tried again, stuck my little hands out, tried to get to her. 'Mama-' But he did it again. He wouldn't let me get to her. 'Nierts.' He said and made me sit down.

I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and the next thing he said sounded like it hurt him too. He said, 'Corine se e gheik. Var mama firim e et va ihnalogri.' "

The last word caught in his throat and Han stopped talking. Leia ran her fingers over his jaw and she saw his eyes close.

"What does it mean?" she asked softly.

"It means…" he began, then had to stop again. "It means…'She is not sleeping.' "

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her.

" 'Your mother can't be with you anymore.' "

"Oh, Han," she whispered, and leant forward.

She hugged him for a moment and then settled her head on his chest.

"What he was doing was saving me. He picked me up, that man, and took me outside. I didn't even see my father's body. And when we got outside, there was a girl there. And the man said something about trying to out me somewhere safe, but she said that'd mess things up. I don't know what she meant. I'm not even sure if that's actually what she said, I was cryin' so hard."

His voice was barely more than a whisper.

"But I cried myself into exhaustion and when I woke up, they were both gone. I was left to fend for myself."

"Who do you think they were?" Leia asked.

"I learned much later that it was a massacre."

"What?"

"The Empire went into Coronet to find the child of the Chancellor but the story goes that he and his family escaped Coronet. Left Corellia and went somewhere else. Of course, the Empire covered it up. Blamed it on weapons testing. 'The Massacre at Coronet' we now know it's called. Most people still haven't heard of it. All children between newborn and three were murdered, along with the family if the family wouldn't hand them over. There were only a handful of the ones at that age - forty or fifty kids - that lived. I'm one of them."

Leia paused for a moment and let that sink in.

"You're one of them."

"Yep," he said quietly. "I'm one of the lucky ones. Half a generation wiped out. Thousands slaughtered."

"Why did they want the Chancellor's child?" she asked.

"He was supposed to be play a strong part in bringing down the Empire, according to the prophecy. You never know. Maybe it's Wedge.

Although it's more likely the Empire caught up with him somehow."

Leia nodded.

"I think the man who saved me was probably a neighbour or something. Knew if he was found with me he'd be killed, too. But I'm lucky he had a heart, however full of self-preservation."

Leia raised her head and looked at him. His eyes were hazel gold now. Almost green.

She leant down and kissed him.

"I love you," she said, whispering the words of affection and comfort she knew he needed.

"Leia," he said, his voice small and vulnerable.

She took him into her arms again and smiled. The children would be out all day. So, instead of getting up and dressing, or going to sleep, she kissed him again and prepared to take him to a place where such things were of no concern.

He stared at her one last time, his eyes a deeper gold-green than she'd ever seen them before.

"I love you too," he answered.


End file.
